Marijuana may be legal(ish) in Denver, but the neighbors can still call the cops over violations of the odor ordinance.

If the olfactometer says you're over the stink limit, the fine is $2,000.

And, by the way, there's a great article about the difficulties of legalizing marijuana in the new issue of The New Yorker: "BUZZKILL/Washington State discovers that it’s not so easy to create a legal marijuana economy." But you'll need to subscribe to read it. Odor ordinances are the least of it. There are big problems with trying to eliminate the black market. Just one is: Young people under 21 aren't going to be allowed to buy legally, and these are a huge part of the marijuana market. Life isn't going to change for them. Another is that the state is seeing legalization in tax terms, which means it's tempted to overprice — which sends folks back to the black market — and it's getting addicted to a cash flow based on heavy users (because it's probably true that something like 20% of the users will by 90% of the product).

Having voted to legalize marijuana, Coloradans now vote to tax it.

Heavily.

Well, of course. You legalize it so you can tax it. To repurpose an old Obama-and-marijuana quote: That was the point.



Obama's appearance arrives at 0:57, after which a commenter (Howard Fineman) opines: "One of the reasons Barack Obama is so popular, especially among younger people, is that he seems so real, he seems to acknowledge the reality of things. It's kind of almost like a dog whistle kind of thing. Older people can't hear it. Younger people hear it. And that's one of the things that they hear. He seems to be willing to be honest."

I need some medical marijuana for my hearing. I'm old. I was old back in 2006 when that clip came out. Yes, I voted for him, but not because I believed he was a new kind of honest. And now, in 2013, watching that, what I hear — on the sound wavelengths that penetrate my old head — is the word "seems," screeching out of Fineman's word montage: He seems so real... he seems to acknowledge... He seems to be willing to be honest.

"Seems" and "willing."

Willing... like: Okay, I'll go along with this looking-honest bullshit for you folks for a while. So follow me, little puppies. I've got a new kind of reality kind of thing to kind of like show you. Can you, like, you know, hear it, kids?

And I got a big laugh out of Kathleen Parker, at the very end saying, "The thing people can't stand is the lies." I then rewatched the clip and lingered over the part where they showed Bill Clinton saying he "experimented" with marijuana and "didn't like it" and "didn't inhale." I found that very refreshing.

That's the kind of honesty I like right now. It was a lie, and you knew it was a lie when he told it. There was none of this feeling of oh, wow, look at the reality, man. What felt real was: There's a politician that will smile and lie straight to our faces. He's a liar.

Those were the days.

"Buying marijuana in Denver is a downright pleasant experience."

"Customers wait in a well-appointed waiting room.... When their names are called, they will follow an attendant through an atrium where they can buy t-shirts or smoking paraphernalia, and into a quaint shop where they can peruse the wares."

There, they will find a wide array of aromatic marijuana flowers in glass jars, pot-infused products — mints, beverages, or something to satisfy the sweet tooth — as well as pre-rolled joints and servings of cannabis concentrates.

Customers are rung up on a computerized point of sale system. They get a receipt — a receipt! — after paying for their marijuana. They are free to walk out to their cars, drive their marijuana home, and smoke it.

It's a remarkably clean system. It doesn't feel like a violation of Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, the federal law that governs controlled substances, even though it is. It's a safe, stable, professional environment.

How incredibly strange! Would you feel free to violate federal criminal law like that? I note the line "when their names are called." You have to give your name? Would you give a fake name? We're in a transitional phase, and it can't go on like this. Can it?

I think it's unfair, but that's me, a scrupulous law-abider. I don't like this gray zone, where something is open as if it's legal, but the feds maintain the power to crush you whenever they want. The risk-takers get their drugs, and those of us who scrupulously limit ourselves to legal substances look on and wonder.

"[K]ids who came to their maturity during the 'Age of Fail,' whose formative experience of American exceptionalism is that America is exceptionally crappy, are pissed..."

"... and are willing to work hard for politicians who are willing to do something about it." If we assume that — as The Nation's Rick Perlstein does in "Is Peter Beinart Right About a ‘New New Left’?" — then...

... another scenario looks like this: young citizens motivated by left-leaning passions run into a brick wall again and again and again trying to turn their convictions into power. The defining story of our next political era becomes not a New New Left but a corrosive disillusionment that drives the country into ever deeper sloughs of apathy.

What if, in other words, the harbinger election didn’t take place in New York...

Beinart had been talking about Bill de Blasio...

... but in Colorado—where a hyper-ideological, insurrectionist, corporate-money-soaked minority... recalled two progressive legislatures for daring to favor background checks for gun purchases even though Coloradans want background checks by a margin of 68 to 27 percent.

Beinart wants to think big. So let’s think big. Given a precedent like that, the result of our current trends might not be more socialism, but once more a stark showdown between socialism and barbarism. Apathy and social misery might make fertile ground for some charismatic demagogue, preaching scapegoating and a narrative of violent redemption…

You say you want a revolution... but what if the revolutionaries are on the other side?

"In Boulder, the rainfall record for September set in 1940 was shattered..."

"... unleashing surging floodwaters in Boulder Canyon above the city that triggered the evacuation of some 4,000 residents late on Thursday."

"There's so much water coming out of the canyon, it has to go somewhere, and unfortunately it's coming into the city," said Ashlee Herring, spokeswoman for the Boulder office of Emergency Management.

Boulder Creek, which runs through the heart of the city, became a raging torrent that burst its banks and flooded adjacent parking lots and streets as warning sirens wailed.

"Bill Althouse, a Colorado activist who identifies himself as executive director of the Campaign to Regulate Alcohol Like Marijuana..."

"... offers some modest proposals for alleviating this disparity, including..."

• If a child sees a parent consume alcohol, Protective Services may remove the child from the home.
• If a parent has one drink, it will cause loss of custody of children in a divorce case.
• No alcohol may be served by the drink anywhere in Colorado.
• All publicly viewable consumption at sporting events, backyards , political rallies, fraternal organizations, breweries, vineyards, farmers markets, and picnics, even if the alcohol is free, is a crime.
• Alcohol consumption outside a private home is a crime.
• No alcohol advertising is allowed except for adult only publications.
• All alcohol production and sales must be a monopoly selected by the State.
• All craft beer is illegal, only large brewers may be licensed as retailers
• All alcohol sales are package sales only, must be in child proof containers and placed in plain dark paper exit packaging stapled shut before leaving the store.
• Non Colorado citizens will be limited to one bottle of beer per purchase.
• Colorado citizens will be limited to a six pack per purchase.
• Home brewers must grow their hops under artificial lights in a separate locked space and brewing must also occur in that locked space. Using sunshine is a crime.
• Alcohol retailers must only sell alcohol and nothing else.
• Outside investment in beer production or hops growing is illegal.

Haven't used my "other Althouses" tag in a long time.

Remember: I am not responsible for the sayings and doings of other Althouses.

University of Colorado appoints a "Visiting scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy."

Is this a good thing?

While [Steven Hayward's] presence will provide some additional viewpoint diversity on the Colorado campus, it also smacks of the sort of tokenism many on the Right condemn.  Peter Lawler sees the appointment as “conservative affirmative action” and Max Boot fears this sort of thing will encourage the further academic ghettoization of conservative thought.... Half of the country may have right-of-center views, but a single token is supposed to constitute balance?  How sad is it that a major university would have to create a position like this to ensure a minimal range of viewpoint diversity on campus.  Through all this, Hayward is keeping things in perspective.

Smoking marijuana and driving — when is it a crime...

... to a state, like Colorado, that legalizes marijuana?

Prosecutors and some lawmakers have long pushed for laws that would set a strict blood-level limit for THC, the key ingredient in cannabis. A driver over the limit would be deemed guilty of driving under the influence, just as with alcohol....

But what's the level that's comparable to the blood alcohol level that's deemed to be too much impairment? It shouldn't just be arbitrary!

Though research and opinions vary widely, studies have shown that smoking marijuana tends to affect spatial perceptions. Drivers might swerve or follow other cars too closely, as well as lose their concentration and suffer from slowed reaction times....

Every state bars driving under the influence. But convictions in drugged-driving cases generally rely on police officers’ observations rather than blood tests. The White House in a drug policy paper last year called on states to adopt blood-limit laws in an effort to reduce drugged-driving incidents by 10 percent by 2015.

There are so many things that impair driving — sleepiness, distraction, low intelligence — why single out anything (including alcohol) for a special law as opposed to relying on observation of actual impaired driving? You could say single out the things that are measurable in the blood. Or you could say: Alcohol deserves to be singled out the way it is because there is a huge, specific, and much-studied problem.

How are people who use marijuana supposed to know when they're over the limit? With alcohol, the products are labeled and there is at least some rough information about the number of drinks and the amount of time that must pass before you can drive. What if you had a drink with dinner and then couldn't figure out whether it was legal to drive the next morning? Isn't that what will happen with marijuana? You'll have no idea what your blood level is, even days later.

Or will there be little blood test kits so you can check? Will the government provide all sorts of labeling requirements for marijuana? They might make legal marijuana production very expensive by requiring predictable calibration of THC and accurate labeling. Then the product could be very expensive, and lots of sales tax could be collected. Isn't that the real puzzle: how to regulate and collect taxes when you've got a product that already thrives as contraband?

"We made an industry out of cigarettes, we made an industry out of alcohol and now we're creating an industry out of marijuana – frankly, it's surreal sometimes."

Says Mary Beth Susman, a member of Colorado's Amendment 64 Implementation Task Force, which is about to report on a plan to regulate marijuana in Colorado (which is part of the United States, which criminalizes the production, sale, and possession of marijuana).

On one hand, the task force has considered new rules for what Colorado should do when it inevitably becomes a center of "pot tourism," it has debated whether smokers can use their backyard patios to light up, and it has considered how to deal with "marijuana clubs" that will appear....

How it converts a massive black market into what experts call "problematic adult commerce" on the fringes of society – akin to gambling, drinking, and go-go clubs – all amid lingering legal concerns, could provide a framework for other states to follow....

"Two students from the University of Colorado Boulder were arrested after they gave marijuana-laced brownies to their professor and unsuspecting classmates Friday."

It was "bring food to class" day. Perhaps they thought it was amusing, considering that "legalization" they have in Colorado now.

[21-year-old Thomas Ricardo Cunningham and 19-year-old Mary Elizabeth] face felony charges including inducing consumption of controlled substances by fraudulent means, and second degree assault.

"A federal court in Indiana has rejected atheists’ requests to preside at wedding ceremonies..."

"... saying only clergy or public officials are licensed to solemnize marriages."

A lawsuit filed by the Indiana chapter of the Center for Inquiry argued that an Indiana law that requires marriages to be “solemnized” — made official by signing a marriage license — only by clergy, judges, mayors or local government clerks — violates the Constitution.

If you don't want a religious officiant, you're forced to use a government official. In Indiana.

May I suggest Colorado, where you can be your own officiant?